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Ask HN: Good Alternatives to VS Code?

8 points by ahmaman ↗ HN
I use VS code as my main code editor and it seem to be the most popular in my bubble.

I am generally happy with with but curious if there are better alternatives that would offer a more productive experience. Curious in particular about WebStorm and Nova.

Any code editors that you are in particular satisfied with?

I do my dev work on a Mac, mainly web development. I generally like to keep my code editor config maintenance minimal.

15 comments

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cwdegidio
I've used many IDEs... VS Code, VS, Eclipse, etc. (and use Macs exclusively)... end of the day, I swear by any of the JetBrains offerings (IntelliJ, WebStorm, etc). They are definitely more complicated, but they really are a true "development environment". Learning all the features is just something that comes with time, but it is honestly worth it. It's awesome having a space to work in that I never have to actually leave.
ahmaman
JetBrains seems to be indeed very popular among HN users.

Could you share some of your favorite features in WebStorm? Curious what would the pitch be if you would recommend it to a colleague.

cwdegidio
It's been a minute since I've run VS Code so there may be some overlaps here with their plugin ecosystem. But things I like: 1. I am a huge fan of the overall "layout" of the IDE.

2. I like being able to set different run configurations when working on a project, for example, if I have an index.js in a client folder and one in a host folder, I can set up an easy way to start them without having to drop to the cli (as much as I love the command line, sometimes I'm just in flow and don't want to bother tracking various tabs).

3. Being familiar with other JB products, it's easy to transfer knowledge from one to the other.

4. Really like the code maintenance capabilities and refactoring... identifying repeated code, easy reformatting, super simple renaming of things.

5. Excellent integration with various version control systems.

6. Recently I was working on a project that required a lot of work with a database and it was nice being able to work with it directly in the IDE without having to jump out of it.

These are just off the top of my head. I would definitely suggest looking at the user manual.

To me it just feels solid... I know that is very opinion based and maybe a bit abstract.

sheerun
What are the tools you like to use in JetBrains products?
logicalmonster
If you're a Mac Web Developer, check out Nova by Panic. https://nova.app/
ahmaman
The idea of a native editor is very appealing. However, I heard that their plugin ecosystem is rather limited. Any experience with that?
noud
I like vim.

But it has a steep learning curve. It might not be the thing you're looking for as it is very different (but not less) than VS code.

nik736
I am still using Atom and I will hate Microsoft forever for killing it. For me no other editor comes close in terms of UX.
tekichan
Try neovim with add-on plugins
linkdd
There is Sublime Text which is quite nice.

Vim if you want to grow a beard (just kidding). It's quite powerful and can be turned into a complete IDE.

As a teenager, I used Geany on Linux, it was quite nice and the first editor I used with an integrated terminal.

d--b
WebStorm user here. I seriously don't understand how anyone works differently...
faangiq
Nothing. Anything else is a mistake.